USHA is the first sex
workers' co-operative in Asia and is one of the largest
and most successful Co-operative among many
co-operatives in West Bengal.

But why a cooperative? How does it
fit into the program of HIV intervention or for that
matter the sex workers' movement?
Usha presents an outstanding case-study to demonstrate
the complex processes that underlie social
transformation of health and development initiatives of
a marginalized community like sex workers. Usha was
registered in 1995, The need for such an initiative was
felt by the sex workers in the early days of HIV
intervention program. Usha has been playing a crucial
and substantive role in the life of individual sex
workers for the sex worker community and the ongoing
movement of the Durbar.

The situation prior to
Durbar

Prior to Durbar's formation, sex
workers' lives were characterized by pervasive economic
insecurity and a lack of control over their earnings.
This had both direct and indirect influence on their
ability to insist on safer sex with their customers.
For sex workers in India, economic exclusion from
government and other formal financial institutions is
both a cause and an effect of their occupation. Sex
workers usually come from economically marginalized
communities where they are often denied the education or
skills to secure employment in the formal sector in our
country coming from low socio economic and caste
backgrounds finds most women income generating
occupations which are low paid and often disrespected by
the upper caste mainstream society e.g. domestic work,
sweeper, sex work, construction work or alike.
The political and gendered economy of sex work is
organized as a 'underground trade' what absolves sex
workers control over their income under these
circumstances sex workers are often compelled to pay
bribes to number of stakeholders of the sex trade such
as police, local gangs or excise department officials.
Husbands, babus and families do often make unreasonable
claims on her earnings. Within the sex trade settings
earnings are often shared with madams or pimps. Gaining
access to a bank or financial institution is often
difficult for sex workers as many of them is unable to
produce proof of identity (e.g. ration cards or tenancy
documents) in addition on to that they required to be
introduced by an existing account holder (which again,
many sex workers cannot procure) over and above the
staff members of financial institution often treat them
in a disrespectful manner, treating them as bad women or
even as dirts.
As a result sex workers were forced to resort to a
informal financial delivery system run by mostly
unscrupulous individual or organization. Sex workers
used to save money with them and could taken against
exorbitant e interest rates leading to cycles of
perpetual indebtedness. In some arrangements, sex
workers' had to work as bonded labour until they can pay
off their debts. Indebtedness also prevents sex workers
from being able to save money to secure future life.
They were unable to for the future or accumulate enough
capital to move out of the occupational or to engage as
independent labour moving .
It was soon realized that unless sex workers' develop
their economically security there is very little hope to
ensure safer sex practices for each one every sex act.

A dream

PEs often used to raise their issues
related to economic exploitation in different project
meetings. In line with the dialogical philosophy of the
organization, SHIP responded by initiating debates with
peer educators about potential solutions, and finally
came to an agreement to form a Co-operative society that
would be run and led by the sex workers. A staffmember
who had links with a fishermen co-operative society took
a groups of PEs for a exposure visits to help them to
understand the concept and to help realize the potential
benefits of initiating such a venture. After initial
reservations about their own abilities, and after much
dialogue and debate, the PEs finally agreed to pursue
this option, and a number of experienced and influential
friends of SHIP were requested to help set up the
co-operative society of and by the sex workers.
Accordingly they collect the relevant paper from the
cooperative department and went for its submission.
However the Government Co-operative Department informed
them that registration of a sex workers' co-operative is
not possible as the cooperative low regulating
co-operatives initiative had a clause which requires
members of the propose society should been a good moral
character. After lot of pernation, one of the staff
member of the cooperative dept suggested that sex
workers should register the organization as a
housewives' organization what could bypass the legal
obstacle. The PEs and SHIP could not agree to this
compromise formula as one of their broader objective was
to gain greater social recognition for sex work as a
profession. Consequently, they started an intensive
lobbying and advocacy campaign to gain draw support to
form their own cooperative. Durbar finally managed to
gain access to the highest level government officials,
culminating in a number of meetings with the honorable
Minister of the Co-operatives.
The Co-operative Minister took initiative to dissolve
the controversial clause of the cooperative society
registration act to help sex workers cooperative act
registered. The clause related to good moral character'
was removed and USHA came into existence as the first
cooperative of sex workers in the country.

The fight within the community
and against the exploiters

USHA represented a symbolic victory
on two counts. First, sex workers were granted formal
recognition by the State as an occupation. Secondly, the
establishment of USHA posed a direct challenge to the
vested interest groups who used to exploit sex workers
earnings by all possible means.
PEs were given leadership positions in the newly
developed USHA who got engaged into local level advocacy
to gain support from key local power brokers. At the
local level, the money lending nexus fiercely resisted
USHA, However USHA became more and more popular among
the sex workers as it is their colleague who used to
approach them. Money lenders in these sex work sites)
collectively tried to resist the success of Usha, They
lodge complaints to local councilors that Usha is
involved in misappropriation of funds. A lot of advocacy
at the State and local level of the ruling political
party was done to counter the situation.
In addition to managing resistance from local power
brokers, SHIP/Durbar and Usha leaders also faced
considerable resistance initially from within the sex
worker community, including some PEs. Bitter experience
had taught the PEs and other sex workers to be
suspicious of any 'new deals' involving money. In spite
of the exorbitant interest rates offered by local money
lenders, the sex workers knew these individuals well,
and they were always available to provide loans without
any paper work A section of sex workers trusted these
money lenders and felt they could be relied upon. In
time, as the PEs saw that their money was being returned
to them on demand and that they were earning good rates
of interest, their trust in the scheme grew and they
began to encourage other sex workers to join USHA. Their
confidence was further boosted when USHA received
Rs.100,000 seed funding from the State Government's
Department of Co-operatives.
A daily collection strategy enabled USHA to expand its
workforce. USHA took this as an opportunity to expand
its reach further within the sex work community,
specifically - to provide opportunities to sex workers'
children, and to facilitate their greater involvement in
the Durbar movement. 'If at that time we took outsiders
as daily collectors, then sex workers would resist or
would not response positively, but when we introduced
these daily collectors and told them, 'look they are our
children, they also stay in brothels - they are like
your children', then they started trusting these daily
collectors.

Usha went beyond the micro-credit
program

Another key activity of USHA was the
development of a Condom Social Marketing program in
1998, referred to as Basanti Sena. This occurred in
response to SHIP's finders suggesting that the free
distribution of condoms should be phased out, and that,
for the sake of long term sustainability, sex workers'
should be encouraged to purchase their own supply of
condoms.
None of these initiatives were easy to implement -
introduction of a regular savings habit, or the new
system of social marketing. USHA workers faced
considerable resistance and were required to display
exceptional perseverance and persuasiveness, "They
thought that we are selling the free condom in the name
of social marketing and making profit out of it."
They countered by saying that Usha was their own
Co-operative and looked after the betterment of sex
workers. When you purchase condom from outsiders, you
have to purchase it by cash, and those condoms are also
of inferior quality have no expiry date. Usha
Co-operative was supplying better quality condoms and
even selling them on short credit.
Despite these initial difficulties, USHA now has the
highest repayment rate of all the co-operatives in West
Bengal and has begun to provide sex workers with larger
loans which can enable them to make bolder investments
or to take significant life steps:
A decision was taken by Durbar in 2000 that USHA workers
could not simultaneously be intervention project staff
or PEs. This enabled respective groups of workers to
devote their full attention to their current activities.
'So now when general sex workers become the board
members, they gradually understand the whole process of
Usha. When these people go into their area and tell
people about Usha, then the news of Usha's activities
and interest in Usha spread in the community'.

New phase of the movement and the
new life of sex workers

The impact of USHA has been multiple
and acted synergistically whereby individual outcomes
(e.g. FRCA registration) have enabled Durbar to expand
and develop in many different ways. This happened at a
number of levels - for Durbar as an institution, for sex
workers as a collective group, and for individuals.
There is a reported change in the money-lending economy
of the sex work sites, where moneylenders are said to
have reduced their interest rates by up to 50% in
response to competition from USHA.

Supporting the movement by
building assets

USHA now acts as Durbar's primary
fiduciary agent, enabling the organization to manage its
own resources independently. It is the only sex workers'
group in India which enjoys this independent status.
This was achieved by obtaining FCRA registration
(permission to receive foreign funds). This in turn has
enabled USHA, and therefore Durbar, to build up a
significant asset base and to safeguard the long term
sustainability of the organization.
USHA's financial success has enabled it to take loans
and invest financial surpluses to build Durbar's capital
assets, such as purchasing land and properties,
including the main Durbar office building located within
Sonagachi area. The fact that a sex workers'
organization can now unproblematically secure bank loans
represents a remarkable shift in social attitudes to sex
workers, and testifies to Durbar's success in
challenging sex work-related stigma. Greater financial
independence has also enabled Durbar to be pro-active
about developing its own programs and initiating new
programs in response to community needs rather than
donor priorities. For example, Durbar has been able to
start new clinics and education centers in district sex
work sites before official donor funding was secured,
further enabling it to build trust among local
communities, simultaneously providing evidence of its
efficacy to convince agencies to provide longer term
support.

USHA
has enabled sex workers to break through a number of
barriers to social and political participation.

The formation of USHA
necessitated the formal recognition of a sex
workers' group in a political forum (through
registration with the government), and in social
and business forums (through receiving bank
loans)

USHA's success and
involvement in national and state level training
and policy making forums has the potential to
influence government policy vis-a-vis support of
sex work groups and vis a vis co-operative
management. USHA has set a precedent that other
States and groups can follow.

Sex workers now have a
powerful voice in the State Co-operative
department

USHA's example means that
sex workers are now increasingly able to take
loans and deal with financial institutions
independently as citizens and workers.

There has been a change in
social norms vis a vis sex work, evidenced by
the willingness of banks and vendors to do
business with sex workers - a situation that
would have been unthinkable ten years
previously.

Impacts on Individual Sex Workers
and on their Working Environment

It enabled sex workers to
confidently negotiate safer sex with the customers and
gave them a sense of security. Now if a sex worker
thinks that she would refuse a customer (for not using
condom or for her own illness), she can do that, because
she knows that her savings would tide her over the next
few days. An increased ability to control one's working
environment and so become independent of madams, has
also been observed along with a greater ability to plan
for the future and enhance one's own and children's life
opportunities:
Finally, greater economic security also contributes
greater power in sex workers' relationships with their
babus - Individual sex workers (who are not Durbar staff
or members or activists) express a general appreciation
of the services that USHA offered (though not all sex
workers used USHA, and not all were able to articulate
the ways in which its services benefited themselves or
their community). However, some older sex workers, who
had been exposed to both systems (USHA and the money
lenders) were able to clearly identify the impacts :
'I am a member of USHA. There are lots of benefits. If
one borrowed money on kisti then one has to return
Rs.700 for every Rs.500 paid - and because I can't read,
I can't find out what they write as well……I am
saving with USHA for the last 5 years. I know my money
is secure with Usha and will earn me good interest. I
needed to have access to quick loans in cases of
emergency….. at USHA, the loan is processed quickly
and the interest rate is affordable. There are other
benefits as well. If I get ill, if I get this AIDS
disease, then we'll not be able to entertain customers,
the money we have saved will help us.'